


The Emotion and The Response

by imbellarosa



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Anyways, F/M, In Words, Kinda, M/M, Multi, Quentin has a secret, USE YOUR WORDS Q, and Penny makes him say it, like the show should make him, queliot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-07
Updated: 2019-04-07
Packaged: 2020-01-06 01:22:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18378059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imbellarosa/pseuds/imbellarosa
Summary: Somethings are realer when you say them out loud, and the secrets we take with us are some of the realest, truest parts of us.ORThe one in which Penny is NOT Dumbledore, Quentin is NOT Harry, and sometimes there are magical fix-its. But before that, we have to use our words.





	The Emotion and The Response

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sensorium](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sensorium/gifts).



> Hi! Wow I've had a lot to say in these last two days! Um okay so this is for a friend bc I got the idea from our convo about who we thought Penny was talking to, and it was meant to be funny, but I am incapable of writing comedy I'm so sorry I wish I could. 
> 
> The title is from T.S. Eliot's Hollow Men, and WOW that's another poet that I highly recommend.

“Hey,” Penny says, with a soft smile on his face. Not sorry, not quite, but sympathetic. Kind. “It’s been a while.”

“Uh, yeah,” Q tries to smile back, and then looks around in a surprised manner, trying to take in his surroundings. He remembers the Monster, and Julia who wasn’t Julia anymore, and then, for a second, he thought he had seen Eliot’s eyes, and then - nothing.  “Um. Am I...dead?”

Penny takes a deep breath and opens his hands, palms up. He seems to be thinking about how to answer the question.

“You’re - in between - right now. It’s not...official, so to speak?”

“So what, I’m in King’s Cross?”

“What,” and there he was, the old Penny, shaking his head and looking at Q like he’d lost his mind. “Dude, no, you’re in the Underworld’s branch of the Library.”

“I...yeah, whatever. How is it that you’re a librarian and you still haven’t read Harry Potter?” 

“There are  _ so many books about real Magicians down here _ . Why would I read about a fake one?”

“I just - ugh. Okay.”

They are silent for a moment, Quentin halfway in the elevator and halfway out. 

“Kady really misses you, you know,” he says. “I mean. She says she’s fine - and she is - she’s such a badass - but she. You know. Misses you.”

“Yeah,” Penny nods, and he lets himself miss her with everything he holds inside of him. But only for thirty seconds. That’s all he gets. He has a job to to. “I miss her, too. But it’s not me we’re here for. Come on, Coldwater. Follow me.”

“Um. Yeah, okay, where exactly are we going,” he calls as they move down the pristine hallway.

“My office,” Penny says with a smirk. He knows what he’s lost, but he’s kinda proud of who he is now. He has a destiny in a picture so much bigger than the five to seven of them. And yeah, he kinda loves that. Sue him. 

“So. Um. You know that the Library is this really fascist regime that’s killing Hedges and restricting magic, right? Like. You’re not the good guy here.”

“That’s your library,” Penny agrees. “And they’re doing some seriously fucked up shit. But Hades runs the show down here. And like. God of Death and the Underworld. We’re pretty solid here.” 

“So what is this, then,” and Penny knows that Quentin has lost his patience because he is standing straight up and he is no longer stuttering and his hair is out of his eyes, and he thinks of this man’s book, and he thinks that he will be fantastic one day. But first, this. 

“We are in the Department of Secrets Taken to the Grave,” Penny sits and pulls out Q’s book from the stack. The woman before Quentin had given up a child and the man after him had killed a man. He faces Quentin and meets his gaze. “So you have a secret. And you have to tell me before you can move on.”

“I - I don’t,” he says firmly, and he sits, too. “I don’t have a secret.”

“Are we really gonna do this? C’mon, man, I’ve read your book.”

“So why do I have to say anything at all,” and he shrugs.

“I mean,” Penny says gently, “You  _ don’t _ . But we will sit here until you do. And time’s pretty weird here, dude. Like. You don’t know how much time has passed up there. Books are the only way to keep track, and you can’t read any so long as you haven’t passed on your secret.” 

They sit in absolute silence for a minute, and then Quentin sighs and slumps.

“Can I - am I dead? Like really. No bullshit.”

“Honestly,” Penny leans across his desk, “I  _ don’t know _ . Your book is - it’s weird, and it’s unfinished, and I think that’s because you keep hanging out with immortal beings but I don’t think it’s...set in stone, so to speak.”

“But I have to tell you my secret?”

“You do.”

“You know it’s not even that big of a deal, right? I was...I was gonna tell someone. I just…some things hurt less when they live inside of you, you know?”

“No,” Penny says, “they don’t. But I know what that feels like.”

“It’s not like...it’s not bad, you know? It’s actually. I don’t know...one of the best parts of my life. I...I didn’t mean for it to be a secret. It wasn’t supposed to be a secret.”

Penny doesn’t think that this is the first time that he has seen Quentin cry, but it is the first time he has paid attention. And so he does: he sees how his heart is cracked and sutured, and how he has tried to fix himself bit by bit but he can only do one minor mending at a time. 

“I know,” he says. “And I know that I am not the first person you wanted to tell. But, man, look at me” - Quentin meets his eyes, and there is a quiet bravery there - “ _ you have to tell someone _ . It will _ literally  _ kill you if you do not. So I don’t know. Sing Taylor Swift or something and spit it out.”

“You can  _ literally read my mind _ .”

“ _ That does not count _ . You have to  _ say it  _ to me. Somethings are realer when you say them out loud, and the secrets we take with us are some of the realest, truest parts of us. And yeah, it’s scary, and it sucks, but it’s the truth, and the truth will not hurt you here. I can only set you free.”

Quentin sighs, and then puts his heads in his hands and seems to draw into himself, and when he emerges, he seems older, and wiser, and more sure of himself. Penny knows who this man in front of him is, and he is glad that he is here. He is glad that a part of him remembers who he can be, when he tries. 

“Okay. I’m just gonna...I loved him. I do. Present tense. And I didn’t care what I had to do to save him, okay? I know that people died, but  _ so many people have died _ , and I just...I wanted to keep him, or get him back, or. He was the first person to really make me feel like I wasn’t alone, and I wanted to keep everyone safe, okay? And I fucking  _ hate that thing in him _ , and I know that I’ve hurt Alice and I didn’t mean to, but oh my God, I think maybe my plan worked? I think he’s alive. And I’m...I would do everything - all of it - again if it means he has a chance. And maybe that’s wrong, and maybe I’m wrong, and I don’t know what it means but I would.”

“It means that you can breathe,” Penny tells him, and the crazy thing is, he’s right, he can, he feels better than he has in a long time, because he is not alone, and it is not okay, but it is not living and dying inside of him anymore.  

“So what now?” Q asks. 

“Well, that’s up to Julia,” Penny tells him and leans back.

“What does that mean? What does Julia have to do with any of this?”

“I think we’re going to wait it out for a minute. Let’s just say that a book owes her a favor.”

So they sit, and they wait, and they each consider all of the times that they had fought, and fought at each other’s side, and then Quentin says, “I miss you, too, you know. It was weird, i know that it was, but. You’re my friend - my family, at this point. And like...I don’t know. I always felt like you secretly liked Taylor Swift.”

“Bet you wish you would’ve been there when I did this interview.”

“Wait, you had to do it, too?”

“ _ No, _ ” Penny scoffs, “I’m like...important and shit around here. They don’t want me telling anyone some of the stuff I know.”

“That’s - pretty fair, actually.”

That’s when Q shifts, feeling as though something is missing, or a memory bubbling, or someone is calling his name from the end of a very long tunnel. 

“I guess that means you’re going home,” Penny smiles. 

“I...what?” And for some reason Penny’s voice is getting fainter and fainter, and he can hear them calling him.  _ Q! Come on, Q! Please _ . And it might be Julia or it might be Eliot, and then he looks around and he is still in the Library. 

“Look at me,” Penny grabs his arm, “Be happy, Coldwater. And tell them. No secrets. Tell them all, and then tell them that I love them too. That I’m okay, and I miss them, and I get it.”

Quentin feels like he’s floating, like he’s hearing Penny through water, and the voices pulling him up are getting closer and sharper, and that’s definitely Julia, and then he feels someone grab him, and he looks and there’s no one there, and Penny shakes him lightly.

“Don’t forget,” Penny tells him, losing composure, speaking louder and faster as though this is the last chance for him to say this. Maybe it is. “You tell Kady. You tell her that I would have chosen her if I could. You tell her that it was never a choice. That I she is my favorite book in this whole goddamn universe, and you tell her that I will see her again, okay? 

“And then go and open a shop and fix shit, or travel, or start a family, but you fucking  _ live,  _ you hear me? I don’t want to see you here again. No more secrets.”

And he closes his eyes and he can’t breathe can’t breathe can’t breatheB and then...he gasps and sits straight up and coughs and he’s in the godforsaken temple that they had buried the monsters in and there’s Julia and Alice and Kady. Penny23, who looks shaken, and so much like the Penny he’s just left. Margo, who’s hugging Eliot. And Eliot, who’s sitting stock still, not crying, not moving, barely breathing. 

“El,” he says, and words feel weird on his tongue. “ _ El _ .”

“It’s okay,” Julia soothes. “It’s okay. He’s okay. We’re here. We made it. You did it, Q.”

He meets Eliot’s eyes, and Eliot is moving before he can blink and then he’s there, and he still smells like the monster; like death and blood and too much sugar, but he is real and he is solid and he is hugging him and Q doesn’t know when they started crying, but he can feel his sobs wrack his body, and then he realized that he is tired and he hasn’t eaten in days and as his eyes close again and his breathing evens into a deep sleep, he sees the world go a deep plum-like color, and knows that it will be better when he wakes up again. He’s got some things he needs to say, after all. 

And, somewhere very far away, Penny finishes a chapter of a book and smiles. He’s never been so happy for a Deus Ex Machina. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Please let me know what you thought! Kudos/comments keep me writing i swear they do. Come say hi at imbellarosa.tumblr.com!


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